Negotiators Unveil Deal On Class-Size Plan

The White House and congressional leaders struck a deal last week on
President Clinton's class-size-reduction program that basically keeps
it intact, but makes changes concerning the hiring of licensed teachers
and districts' flexibility in spending class-size dollars.

Budget negotiators also agreed to raise discretionary spending for
the Department of Education by about $2.1 billion over last year's
level to roughly $35.6 billion in fiscal 2000. With an increase of
slightly more than 6 percent from fiscal 1999, the total surpasses both
the president's initial request and the amount Republicans had put in a
budget bill vetoed by Mr. Clinton this month.

"The agreement we have reached has bipartisan support, and it keeps
us on track to hiring 100,000 teachers by 2005," Mr. Clinton declared
last Thursday.

Becky Campoverde, a spokeswoman for Republicans on the House
Education and the Workforce Committee, said Chairman Bill Goodling, R-
Pa., was especially pleased about the program's heightened emphasis on
high-quality teachers and a provision allowing more funding for staff
development. But, she added, "clearly, we would have liked much broader
flexibility."

The agreement came after the rhetoric from both the Clinton
administration and congressional Republicans had grown especially
heated in recent days, as supporters and opponents of the program held
competing press conferences leading up to the final deal.

The GOP had pushed through an original spending bill for the
departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education that
would have allowed funding for the president's class-size program to be
used by school districts for a variety of educational purposes. Citing
that language and other concerns, Mr. Clinton vetoed the
bill.

Substantive Changes

Under the terms of the agreement as of late last week, $1.3 billion
would be appropriated for the second year of the class-size-reduction
program, a $100 million increase over fiscal 1999 but less than Mr.
Clinton's $1.4 billion request. At press time, discussions were
continuing on whether to add $25 million.

The plan would raise from 15 percent to 25 percent the cap on how
much of the aid could be spent on professional development of all
teachers. It also would mandate that new teachers be certified, or have
completed an alternative route to certification, before they were hired
with money from the federal program. Under current law, they can be
hired so long as they are enrolled in a certification program.

"We think that's a very big deal," said Amy Wilkins, a senior
associate with the Education Trust, a Washington-based group that
promotes higher achievement for poor and minority students. "It is the
business of the federal government to ensure that every kid has a fully
qualified teacher."

Furthermore, in districts where 10 percent or more of teachers were
not state-certified, district officials could request waivers to use
all of their funding for improving teacher quality, provided their
states had been granted the added authority allowed under the federal
Ed-Flex policy.

Beyond class-size reduction, the White House and Congress have also
tentatively agreed on the rest of the Department of Education budget
for the current fiscal year, though a few details were still being
worked out late last week.

Under the plan, total funding for the department would rise from
roughly $33.5 billion in fiscal 1999 to about $35.6 billion. The
president had proposed spending $34.7 billion, and Republican leaders
proposed $35 billion, along with a 1 percent across-the-board
agency-wide spending cut they also included in the vetoed spending
bill.

Several significant changes were made to bridge differences between
GOP lawmakers and Mr. Clinton. For one, negotiators agreed to boost the
funding level from the vetoed bill by $100 million for Title I grants
to school districts. That would raise the total for such grants to
roughly $7.9 billion, up from $7.73 billion in fiscal 1999.
After-school funding would be set at $450 million, a $150 million
increase over the original Republican plan but still less than the
president's $600 million request. And $200 million, or $20 million more
than in the vetoed bill, would be provided for the GEAR UP program.
Another Clinton administration priority, gear up seeks to encourage
students from low-income families to attend college. Fiscal 1999
funding stood at $200 million for after-school programs and $120
million for GEAR UP.

Congress last week approved another "continuing resolution," the
fifth such stopgap-spending measure this fall. It allowed the
government to continue operating through Nov. 17. The move was
necessary because, although the new fiscal year began Oct. 1, five
spending bills still have not been signed into law. Among those is the
bill for the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and
Education.

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